You said that I don’t live in CA. I showed you my rate plan from SDGE, last time I checked San Diego was still a part of CA. 15c/kwh is very much reality at least in this part of the state.
I don’t have SDG&E, wasn’t talking about SDG&E and I was talking about PG&E specifically.
California has way too many public utilities. Most states have just one. So instead of having just one monopoly in your state controlling your energy prices, there are a bunch of monopolies controlling energy prices for the region.
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Well, If i needed another reason not to live in California, the insight in this thread definitely was helpful.
I’ll just remain a visitor from time to time. 
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I agree, It is ridiculous. The government-run and owned utilities deliver power more cheaply than the off the rails investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SoCal Edison and SDG&E.
The PG&E rates are unbelievably high.
There are plenty of reasons not to live in CA. Eh $50 additional a month in electric costs really shouldn’t be on that list though
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CA gets some ballin’ deals on EV leases though.
If I was paying 30-80c/kWh (averaged to ~43c per) our electric bill would be 330% of what we pay now.
That’s a lot more than $50.
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Not sure where everyone here in CA lives but even with the high primetime TOU rates it’s not that hard to avoid using electrons from 4pm-9pm.
Most appliances have a smaller load usage than an EV so that’s really what you need to time-shift charging usage.
And if it is a concern… solar w/ battery will probably save you quite a bit.
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I too have considered not being poor or warm blooded from 1600-2100.
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Weather isn’t as shit as Texas though.
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That depends how close to the coast you are.
Might be doable where you have a nice ocean breeze or winds riding up a ridge but if you live in the rain shadow or too far inland….welllll….yeah.
I am assuming your home is quite a bit bigger?
Well, in that case, you won’t be able to afford that bigger home anyways, so problem solved?
I got lucky on this house. Insulation is good and the AC is pretty efficient (its also dual zone too!). Even when its 98 F outside, it stays at or below 80 F inside. I can cool it down to 72 F upstairs in about 1 hour. My relatively small 2 kW solar system will offset it down to like 0.8 kw pulled from the grid for that hour. Then after that I’m getting ~ 1.3 kW worth of credit back at whatever the TOU rate is at the time.
Now if I get an EV, I’ll have to be a little smarter about usage or expand my array within NEM 2.0 allowance.
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As a PG&E customer and EV-2A rate payer I very much disagree with many of the conclusions here. There are corner cases where gas cars might be cheaper, but overall EVs are much cheaper to run (depreciation aside, anyway) in the vast majority of cases. An example from my own use:
I bought a 2018 Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor new in 2018 and now have a bit over 87,000 miles on it. I recently converted to solar, but based on the EV-2A I was on until recently: over the last year I’ve charged 5,384 kWh, 78% at home on at an average of $.27 per kWh and 22% supercharger @ $.44. $1,286 dollars to charge in total to cover roughly 20,500 miles.
If I’d instead bought an Audi S4 back in 2018, a similar if slightly slower 4wd car in an adjacent class, I’d be getting 24 mpg on premium fuel. Even filling up at Costco I’d have averaged ~$5.50 per gallon, putting my fuel bill over the last year at $4,700. That’s a savings of $3,400 over the last year alone, or if prices were constant $14,500 over the life of the car so far. Not even close.
Could I somehow be paying that much more because prices spike between 4 pm and 9 pm? I guess some people could if they really tried, but in my case again it’s not close. We set our dishwasher on a timer, run the washing machine and pool pump before 3 pm. In doing so all of these draws are cheaper than they would be without the EV-2A plan. We turn the thermostat down before prices spike in the afternoon as well, banking “cool” and reducing our peak use. With behavior changes like these our “normal” use costs didn’t go up appreciably on EV-2A.
Largely due to this math we recently swapped our gas GV-70 to an electric Ioniq 5, saving another $300 in “fuel” costs in the process. And that’s not counting NEM-2 solar, which drops our effective any time marginal cost per kWh to ~$.10.
I can get to EVs being a questionable financial deal for some when including depreciation and insurance or when comparing apples and oranges (Toyota Prius vs Model 3 Dual Motor, for example). But most of the criticism here isn’t that, and it’s sounding suspiciously like it’s coming from people without real world experience.
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Nope just a 2,000sqft single story ranch with dual pane windows, a pool and tons of direct sunlight.
Some of this is circumstantial, I was speaking to my use case.
Last cycle the electric portion of the bill (with no home charging) was almost $250, and I was there using the AC about 9 days during the cycle.
The thermo’s usually on 80, which I find comfortable.
We don’t even have a TV. 
That was at a weighted average of $0.488. Imagine at $0.80.
A/C is from 2004 when the home was built, and will probably die soon. I just had a technician bring it back from the dead after it refused to wake up.
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We have had calcs performed by an energy consultant every few years based on the size of our house, the pool usage, overall use pattern and with our solar (you can also do this online through PG&E). We have very new HVAC equipment, very good insulation and windows, and close the southern-facing blinds from April-October in the afternoon to minimize heat. We don’t let PG&E dictate to us when we run our AC, washer/dryer, pool pumps and dishwasher. We do break even some years, but some years we are over and some under. This year @ true up time it will be very different due to the abnormally cold winter with far less sun (90% of heat is a heat pump as well), and added to an all-electric house (save for the cooktop and furnace (10% of heating)), per the calcs we would be upside down with charging 1 or 2 EVs even without an additional outlay for batteries. The offset of fuel for 3x cars that are not driven very much is really not significant when you look at the electricity cost, insurance, charger install and everything else. We would not drive a Prius or any Tesla, but would be driving a “MPGe guzzler.” If the real world kWh price was under $0.20/kWh on any overage a true up then it might make sense, but coming off a grandfathered NEM 1.0 and outrageous (and rising) PG&E rates of course means that will never happen.
Will get an EV when I have to get one, but driving 3x ICE machines works for us both driving-wise and cost-wise.
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Makes sense in your case, but I think you recognize being grandfathered in on NEM 1 puts you in a small minority.
We’ve gone the opposite direction: 14.6 kW locked under NEM 2 through 2043. Enough to let us run 2x EVs as much as we’d like and convert our remaining gas water heat, drier and radiant to electric. It’ll be interesting to see where gasoline and gas prices go over the next two decades and watch how that plays out. We do have a few gas cars as well, they just don’t get enough miles to move the needle.
Power prices changing with availability is now a fact of life. Blame it on the energy revolution, not PG&E. We had whale blubber, coal, oil and now renewables. The good news is that while you’re welcome to keep doing what you’re doing if you can set your dishwasher timer that power will cost you half as much, and that difference will only increase as time goes on. Personally we found adapting to this new reality a sacrifice. And it will only get easier- storage ACs, etc will soon become the norm.
So many things wrong with your analysis.
- You are comparing M3 to a A4. I would compare a M3 to a corolla. Tesla’s 3/Y aren’t a luxury car, and should not be compared as such.
- If you paying 27c/kwh for electric, you are definitely paying MUCH higher rates for daytime use. Take that into account and see how much is there a different.
- How bad is the mileage on a A4? My 5-series, which is a much bigger and heavier sedan, consistently gave me 30-32mpg
Teslas in general are more efficient but im not still convinced that you are getting 4mi/kwh